


Each Like A Pearl

by Go0se



Series: Bandom Bingo Fills [2]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: 3 + 1 Things, American Sign Language, Bandom Bingo 2017, Fish Puns, Fish out of Water, Gen, Merman Patrick Stump, Merpeople
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-24 09:24:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10738821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Go0se/pseuds/Go0se
Summary: Pete waited a second, then explained into the silence, "It's funny because you’re literally a fish--part-fish—and metaphorically out of water.""Pete, I told you if you keep saying that I will literally kill you where you stand.”Three Pete Wentz’s who made a bad pun about merman Patrick, and one who didn’t.





	Each Like A Pearl

**Author's Note:**

> Written to fill my 'Fish out of water' square for Bandom Bingo! All of these were meant to be drabbles but then they grew wildly out of hand! Number one is still legitimately a hundred words, but the others I make no claim for.
> 
> -

 

1.

_On A Quiet Day in August_

“So what’s your favourite kind of story?”  
“I like mysteries,” Patrick said, wiping a lock of wet hair out of his face. “Books wash up here sometimes, or people leave them on the beach. Who done-it’s and stuff.”  
“Mysteries are rad,” Pete agreed. He rolled on the wooden dock so he was looking at the other boy, in the water, upside-down. He grinned. “You like the _fishy_ characters?”  
In response, Patrick grabbed some seaweed from under his tailfin and smushed it onto his friend’s smug face.  
“Sick!” Pete laughed through the dripping plant.  
“Serves you right,” Patrick snapped, laughing back.

 

*

 

_2._

_The Secret Beach_

  
Pete had been telling Joe and Andy about the merman he’d found for weeks on end, but they only agreed to actually go see ‘him’ because it was the second-hottest day of the summer and there weren’t any parties happening. He brought them to the ‘secret beach’ on foot, chattering excitedly about his new friend all the way down.  
But when they got there nothing was in the crystalline water except for rocks and a couple of frogs. “Should we wait?” Andy asked, peering into the large pond.  
“Should you admit you’re making it up?” Joe snarked at Pete.  
“No, he’ll be here,” Pete promised. “He’s just a nervous dude.” Then he cleared his throat and said loudly, “He’s a real _fish out of water_ meeting new people.”

A loud  _THWAP_   sounded from beside the outcropping of rock they were standing on. Suddenly Pete was scrambling to stay on his feet, soaked to the skin and laughing hysterically.

A young man had appeared in the water that had only been shadows before. He was floating on his back, naked to the waist, and from the waist-down he was a glittering human-sized sepia-coloured tail.  
He looked up at Joe and Andy with a raised eyebrow, and used his hands to sign, “He a dick to you too?”

“He can’t talk out loud,” Pete told a stunned Joe and Andy smugly. “He learned ASL from a camp of deaf kids that came here a while ago. He’s been teaching me.”  
“… I owe you twenty bucks,” Joe said.   
  
  
Andy stepped forwards, closer to the edge of the rock. He looked down at the curious merman who was still idly floating. “I’m Andy,” he said out loud, while slightly clumsily signing A-N-D-Y. “This dude behind me is Joe.” J-O-E.  
Joe waved from behind him, still clutching his beer.  
“I’m still Pete,” Pete added. He didn’t spell out his name, instead making the signs for _short_ and then _asshole_ in quick order _._  
The merman laughed. It sounded like a rush of water on pebbles. “I’m P-A-T-R-I-C-K.” He paused, then swam closer and waved. “Good to meet you.”

 

* 

 

3.

_Setting The Stage_

  
Patrick wasn’t the first merfolk to play with a human band, but he might be the first to do it without a transmorgrifying potion. He thought about a lot while he was floating about in his cave in the Current District, in between flipping through plastic-paged books or, when he was at the dry-air portion of his apartment, plucking at the acoustic he kept there. It’d been the first guitar he’d ever had. He’d found it in the surf when he was almost still a tadpole, and had been slowly teaching himself how to play for years now.  
It wasn’t that he didn’t _want_ to go on tour with his band. It was that he was worried all of his stuff would take up too much time and space.

 

He brought it up with the guys during their weekly rehearsal/jam session in the Current District Visiting Commons, them all sitting on chairs on the dry side while Patrick bobbed in place close to the glass divider holding back the river. He kept his head above the air-line, obviously, so they could talk to each other. It’d become a habit to him now. Still, it wasn’t the most intuitive thing, and that was here, in a place that had been specifically designed for human-merfolk interaction. Getting him safely onto a stage would be a whole undertaking unto itself.  
"We wouldn’t want you to feel uncomfortable,” is the first thing that Andy and Joe say when Patrick brings it up to them.  
Pete chimed in with a, “Yeah, wouldn't want you to be a fish out of water.” He waited a beat, then explained into the silence, "It's funny because you’re literally a fish--part-fish—and metaphorically out of water."  
Patrick pinched his nose while his tailfin flicked in annoyance underneath him. "Pete, I told you if you keep saying that I will literally kill you where you stand.”  
Pete grinned. “Sorry, dude. Don’t mean it.” He then shuffled sideways closer to the glass divider and put his hand up where Patrick could reach it. “We’ll talk to Harmony about it,” he added seriously. “She’ll be able to work it out.”  
Harmony was their very fortuitously-named tour manager who was one of the rare people who lived up to a virtuous name. She was polite, democratic, and really good at closing deals.  
Patrick was, reluctantly, a little heartened. He squeezed Pete’s fingers back, then offered his hand with a kind of wave to both Joe and Hurley.  
They made a pact together.

 

Several months later, Patrick was trying to stop himself from swimming anxious laps inside the travelling tank that the label had rigged up for him.

It’d all gone amazingly well, all things considered. The trickiest part had been setting up the guitar.  
All other logistics had been worked out. The tank itself that he’d been transported in was fixed with wheels, so it could travel up the access-ramp to the stage and then be locked into place. The stagelights had been calibrated to not to make Patrick’s tank too warm. The mic would be insulated, to prevent disaster if he should pull it into the water with him in a fit of mid-song exuberance, and set on a special divot in the industrial-strength glass that he could swim up to. A platform had been installed on the inside of his tank for him to rest on between songs. Patrick couldn’t have an ear-piece, so their tour manager had worked it out with the venue to translate any important memos during the show into ultrasonic clicks which Patrick would be able to pick up while also going over the audience’s heads. Pete would be picking up most of the verbal hype.  
Patrick had been kind of worried about the wardrobe he’d been aside, just because certain fabrics stuck to him in ways he didn’t appreciate. During one of the rehearsals he’d confessed to Pete. “I don’t really like the clothes, man."  
Pete had immediately yanked off his own shirt in the name of solidarity, then bolted across the stage to wrestle Joe out of his. (Andy had already been bare-chested when they’d got there. He’d just laughed his magical laugh. Several hand-sized pixies had manifested, and hung out adoringly on his cymbals until soundcheck.)  
Harmony, when coming back into the room, had held her face in her hand for a second, but then assured Patrick that if the clothing made him uncomfortable he absolutely didn’t have to wear it just for the show.  
Pete had cheered behind her, still shirtless, and Patrick had laughed.

  
That had been nice. Now it was really happening though, and he felt decidedly less carefree.   
Stewing in his own anxieties wasn't going to help anything, Patrick was fully aware. He might as well try and talk to somebody about it. He swam to the top of his travel tank and balanced his arms on the edge. “Hey,” he called out, “Excuse me?”  
One of the venue techs, who’d been walking past with a load of stuff in her arms, turned to look at him and then walked over when he waved. They were about face-to-face height. “Something I can help you with?”  
“That’s the problem,” Patrick said without thinking. When the tech just blinked, confused, he explained his dilemma. He wrapped it up by saying, “It just—it feels like it’s a lot of over-compensating, to me.” He hated that. Not that he would tell the tech this—it wasn’t her fault, or even her job for listening to him—but there was a thin line between being helpful and pitying. Patrick had received the latter a lot in his life.  
The tech had been nodding along while he spun his weird story. When he’d finished she took a second to think. “It’s really not,” she answered finally. She was standing a polite distance away so none of the expensive electronics she was carrying would get dripped on. She transferred a light to her other hand and swiped her hair out of her eyes. “Like, it’s a lot of effort, of course. But it’s not over-compensating. If anything it’s just regular compensating. It’s part of our jobs to build this--” she gestured, as much as she could, to the theatre around them, “So that everybody can access it. You know? It’s good for people. The management says it’s good business, too,” she added. “So there’s that incentive.”  
“There’s no way you get a lot of travelling merfolk bands in here, though.”  
“No,” she agreed. “You’re all pretty unique in that. But we’re happy to have you here, and again, it’s our job.”

 

Patrick felt better about it after that.

 

When the crowd roared as he swum up to his seated rest and the tech handed him his _personalized Epiphone waterproofed electric guitar,_ will wonders never cease, he felt straight-up damn good.

 

*

 

_+1._

_Happy Anniversary_

 

Patrick had been given the potion by a friend who’d bought it from a local marketplace, thinking it’d make a good anniversary present for him and Pete. They had meant super well, so Patrick hadn’t explained the lurch in his gut to them.

If he drank the potion, it would give him legs for thirty-six human hours. Patrick would get to be with Pete for thirty-six human hours.  
Of course the flip side was it would hurt like knives on Patrick’s human feet from the instant they took form, and he wouldn’t be able to speak, and most worryingly he’d turn into seafoam if he didn’t get back to ocean in time. None of those were optimal. But he’d get to be with his boyfriend, really with him, for the first time in the two years they’d been together.

Patrick swam back and forth in his cave, turning the bottle over in his hands.

Just as he was about to uncork the thing and chug it back in one swallow because fuck it, there was a flickering light outside the wooden trapdoor at the front of his home.  
Patrick stuck the potion back in the divot it’d came from and swam over, curious.

He pulled the trapdoor open and then froze.

 

Pete was floating in place outside his door. Pete with a _tail._

His iron-straightened hair waved a little at the ends, while gills fluttered at either side of his neck. His brown skin was dappled with the light coming through from the top of the water, and flecked with glittering maroon scales that merged into a solid sheen from his hips down. He had a translucent tailfin that he was flickering back and forth like he was nervous. That was causing him to be a little wobbly, so he was also clutching the barnacle-encrusted wall beside Patrick’s cave’s door. Bioluminescent algae—a merfolk delicacy, and the light that Patrick had seen—was flickering in his other hand. He held it up like a present.  
When Patrick finally met his eyes they were the same beautiful opal-tone as his tail, with pupils that were a lot bigger than a human’s would be.  
Pete opened his mouth, seemed confused for a moment, and then closed it. Instead he started signing (a little awkwardly since he was still holding onto the algae). “Surface apothecary,” he explained. “Got a potion. Sorry I didn’t tell you.” Then, more nervously, “I love you.”

Patrick pulled Pete by the shoulders with both hands, dragging him into a hug and then kissing him soundly. He then let Pete go to press their foreheads together, several happy clicks flying out of his throat.  
Bubbles streamed from Pete’s mouth. If he was still shaped like a human that would’ve been a laugh. He smiled at Patrick, and his eyes crinkled up just the same.

“Pete,” Patrick signed out, then pressed his whole palm lightly into his boyfriend’s chest over his heart. “I love you too.”

 

_-Fin-_


End file.
